Gossamer & Iron
by IvyXLacrimosa
Summary: [AU, KiyoHana, One-Shot] "Kill me sweetly."


**_Gossamer & Iron_**

**_AU / KiyoHana (Sort of) / Drama / Supernatural / Tragedy_**

**_A/N: _**_What did I just write. Damn I'm strange. Oh well, enjoy this angsty goodness._

_Short, not that happy Vampire!Hanamiya X Hunter!Kiyoshi thing that kind of just happened._

* * *

Red was such a whimsical color to him, a flimsy, easily manipulated thing, like the people this red around him came from. The way it leeched what warmth he contained away as it dried, nearly steaming in the frozen midnight air around him, was a trait he was fond of. Even in its last moments, blood tried to _live_.

Sadly, the blood of this person was scattered too far and too thick to help bring the man it came from back to life.

Crouching by the body of his victim, Hanamiya Makoto watching detachedly as the man's tanned skin turned sickly white. Instinctively, the dark haired male licked at the blood that was leaking down his face, using gravity in an attempt to escape the one who'd freed it from the body sprawled unnaturally on the ground.

The darkness covered it up, but underneath the shadows of clothes and inky splatters of blood, hidden behind the deceptive curls of elegant arms and legs, were broken bones and what had been a shattered mind. That was how Hanamiya killed: they always _wanted_ to die before he gave them death.

As the dark, sweet coppery taste of blood spread over his tongue, Hanamiya quietly studied the picture before him, bored and wistful. He was used to this, blood and death at his fingertips, no identity, no evidence. There was no other way for him to be.

"Is it not the greatest gift I could give, numbing the pain?" He mused out loud, hand dragging through the sticky pools at his feet as he studied the liquid's reaction. It rippled, catching the flickers of a streetlight that felt miles away from where he was in that dark bloody world.

Behind him, a soft sound echoed, a sigh of empathy. "You could have not killed him at all," murmured the new companion to the killer in the alley, tone almost like that of a parent soothing a terrified child. Hanamiya laughed a little, brows pulling together as he shook with little mirth.

The dark haired, bloodstained boy obliviously rubbed a hand down his face, streaking half dried blood across his features. "You're always so diplomatic, Kiyoshi," rasped Hanamiya, shoulder hunching a bit as he turned to look over his shoulders, gray eyes like quicksilver.

At the edge of the street, with the light behind him shading his expression but not his eyes, Kiyoshi Teppei stood, tall and calm. Like pins, Kiyoshi's dark eyes held Hanamiya down, and when he shook his head slightly, the tight tilt to his lips became stark lines of black and white.

Gleaming in his right hand was the shine of a sword, sleek and deadly, resting comfortably in his grasp. The regret in his gaze and the sorrow in his tone didn't seem to discourage the determination in his eyes. "You've overstepped your boundaries, and I've let you go for too long. I know you didn't want this for yourself, I know you didn't plan to be like this."

Hanamiya shifted his foot to the side, so that he was opened up toward Kiyoshi, head lolling back lazily. "You aren't any better than I am, Kiyoshi," he was grinning a bit, "We're merely two side to the same coin, and the one called is always more welcome than the one unwanted."

The grin that curled the dark haired man's lips was lopsided, and, on the side nearest to the brunet newcomer, the light gleamed off a fang. Palpable madness flickered like fireflies through Hanamiya's glower, lids lowering to hood his gaze.

"I fail to see the resemblance between us," Kiyoshi murmured mournfully, walking calmly up to the boy drenched in blood. His steps are light and fleet, betraying his large size, and graceful like a dancer's. He came within a foot of Hanamiya, and thick brows lifted in an expression of false shock as Hanamiya looked up.

"Oh?" Hanamiya sounded displeased at Kiyoshi, and rose to his feet, the long motion languid as he let his bloodied arms hang by his sides. He still has to look to see Kiyoshi's face, but, up close, his own gray gaze is stronger, Hanamiya knows this, something darker flickering in the iris. "You kill, I kill, aren't we peas in a pod? Too similar to do anything but coexist?" he lilted the questions in a singsong voice, tongue darting out to capture more the red staining his thin lips.

Sadness flickered through Kiyoshi's countenance, and then his eyes dropped to the dead man in an alley. "He did not deserve to die," he stated softly, tension in the atmosphere contradicting the tone of their voices and sets of their shoulders.

"He wanted to," Hanamiya drawled, shifting his weight to one foot and crossing his arms in a thoughtful motion. "He begged and pleaded with me for an easy way out. _I don't want to take my life, but I want to die, _he said. Coward." Disgust rotted the usually charismatic voice of Hanamiya.

Kiyoshi turned to him fully, chin lifted. "He did not deserve to die," he repeated, steel in his tone telling Hanamiya more than anything that he'd crossed a line that Kiyoshi had set for him, and there was no going back.

"And now you're going to kill me?" the dark haired boy lightly enquired, smirking fully now even though there was something dead in his eyes when he looked up at his longtime acquaintance. This fragile balance of Hanamiya's monstrous tendencies and Kiyoshi's occupation had lasted three years, but, like all things perfect, they crumbled to dust eventually.

That reluctance turned Kiyoshi's lips down again, and Hanamiya almost laughed. "It is what I must do," murmured the brunet slowly, inhaling through his nose. "I cannot bear to watch you fall further, Makoto."

The use of his name and the broken boy pausing for half a second, then he did laugh. He laughed flippantly, his throat still raw with a hunger he couldn't describe and a fire he couldn't quench. "That is where you become similar to me, Teppei," his countering use of Kiyoshi's name darkened the boy's eyes, and Hanamiya's fine-tuned ears caught the sound of his companion's fingers clenching around the hilt of his sword.

"I do not see what you mean," the wistfully bright voice that was what defined Kiyoshi—faker than even Hanamiya but oh so sweet—admitted. The breathless lie halted Hanamiya's laughter.

"You don't?" he inquired dryly, his skepticism almost mocking. "Well, let me inform you of our similarities. I don't want to die, but you're going to kill me because it's what _you_ think is best. I killed him not because he deserved it, but it's because of what _he_ thought was best for himself. See the connection?"

He stepped forward, until there was only a breaths worth of space separating them. Rising on his tiptoes (_and still coming short, damn that bastard_) Hanamiya whispered, "We kill for the greater good, do we not, _Teppei_?"

In Kiyoshi's eyes, glazed over with some emotion that Hanamiya didn't care to identify, he could see his own reflection. His eyes were sunken in his head, skin sallow with a fever he'd never sweat out, and smile sharp with prickling need. Hanamiya licked again at a spot on his face, rolling the now familiar flavor across his tongue.

"…You should not have become like this," Kiyoshi said somberly, brows low as his voice.

Sucking in a rattling breath, Hanamiya backed up a few steps, blood sloshing around his dirty dress shoes. There went the clothes he was wearing, shame, he had appearances to keep up, and he was running out of appropriate clothes for everyday business.

Shaking his head and gathering his scattered thoughts, Hanamiya focused on the bitterness that wasn't the tantalizing taste of blood in his mouth. "You know, if you would have done your job, I wouldn't be like this," he spat out, unjust rage flittering through him.

Because Kiyoshi needed to_ hurt_, like Hanamiya did when fire coursed through his veins and every promise his former friend had made wilted to dust like his heart in his chest. The concept of eternity and three years of sleepless nights made holding a grudge an easy feet.

Kiyoshi visibly flinched, no small accomplishment for the usually undaunted killer of all things dark and scary and the likes. Hanamiya scoffed under his breath, and Kiyoshi grimaced at him as if choking on something bitter. Maybe the smell of blood was becoming unpleasant to him as it rose through the backstreet they were situated in.

"And now," Hanamiya continued, lifting his dirty hands in a dramatic gesture, "You're going to kill me as a way to clear your conscience, no?" He raised a brow, asking for denial or affirmation, and he got neither. Rolling his eyes—was it him, or was the air getting hazy?—he continued in an attempt to goad on his counterpart. "I could fight back," he pointed out lightly, bringing a hand to his lips and languorously licking the blood off the back of the appendage.

Kiyoshi followed the motion, something in his eyes changing with frustration and that emotion that Hanamiya couldn't pin down. It was a sharp thing, a lot like angry, and soft like sorrow. "You are too weak to fight me," Kiyoshi murmured.

When Hanamiya lowered his hand from his lips, it quaked with an uncontrollable tremor. "Then what's keeping you Kiyoshi!" He shouted, the roar ripping through him like a tidal wave, his emotions spilling out in unintelligible yells. "I may have all the time in the world, but we damn well know you don't!"

"Your mind is rotting," Kiyoshi informed him, as if he didn't already know, "Soon, you won't even be angry. You won't be Hanamiya Makoto. I can't watch that happen." The steel was back and Hanamiya closed his eyes.

"Then hurry," he barked out, tone raspy with the hunger and desperation. When he opened his eyes, he looked up, steadily meeting Kiyoshi's gaze, and when the warm orbs widened with horrible realization, Hanamiya knew that his message had finally been received. _I want to die_.

He was a hypocrite, he knew, but he'd never cared about those sorts of things. Watching the pain in Kiyoshi's eyes blossom, Hanamiya felt a sense of wonder within him—how could killing someone who'd only loosely been a friend a painful thing? Kiyoshi knew what Hanamiya was becoming better than anyone; shouldn't Kiyoshi be the most resolute?

But he was, determination blooming in his widening stance, and the set of his lips. Then, with that sense of clarity that often comes with madness, Hanamiya realized what that pain meant—that bastard had the audacity to _care _about him.

Lips twisting into a snarl, Hanamiya bared the fangs he'd acquired when he'd been attacked by a monster of the night that fateful day three years ago. "What are you waiting for?" He snapped, hands shaking even more now as he felt that weakness from the hunger eat at his thoughts. The blood around them didn't help either, and Hanamiya couldn't help but suck in a deep breath through his nose.

What a bittersweet smell it was.

At this point, Kiyoshi had raised the sword to where its tip was level with the large man's shoulders, both hands around the hilt, swallowing it in their large grasp. Hanamiya smiled, eyes flickering with anticipation.

"I'm sorry," Kiyoshi whispered, eyes meeting with Hanamiya's. Were those _tears_? They were, and, as he watched, they escaped the confines of Kiyoshi's eyes to slide down his face, lurid like falling stars against the blackness of the night.

Scoffing, Hanamiya took another deep breath, stretching his arms out to the side, baring his chest. He could feel himself smiling, and, as a bitter snicker escaped him, he felt his own eyes glaze over.

"Kill me sweetly," he whispered mockingly, hands shaking and mind so tired from fighting it off for so long. _Finally_, he thought to himself_, it's the end_.

Hanamiya Makoto closed his eyes, and listened to the frantic beat of a heart across from him, a familiar, strong sound that he'd grown fond of over three years.

Then he was no more.


End file.
